Chapter Three The Club, the Trap, and the Almost Kiss #3
Calia’s eyes gleamed. “Be careful. Jarvis is easiest to love when he’s standing between you and danger. Harder when you realize he brought half of it with him.”
Makayla hated that line because it sounded like warning and manipulation at the same time.
Renzo checked his phone, suddenly nervous.
Calia noticed too.
Her smile returned, smoother now. “I have a room waiting if you want answers.”
Jarvis said immediately, “No.”
Makayla looked at Calia. “Where?”
“Back hallway. Green door.”
“Makayla,” Jarvis said.
Calia looked right at her earpiece now. “Let her choose, Jarvis. You remember choices, don’t you?”
The earpiece went silent.
That did something to Makayla.
Jarvis always had an answer. A command. A warning. A plan.
But Calia had hit something that shut him up.
Makayla needed to know what.
Calia turned and walked away.
Renzo followed after a beat, but not before glancing back at Vasha with something close to warning.
Vasha grabbed Makayla’s arm. “Do not follow her.”
Makayla looked down at Vasha’s hand.
Vasha let go.
“I’m sorry,” Vasha whispered. “I know I don’t get to tell you anything right now, but please. Don’t.”
Makayla looked toward the back hallway.
The green door sat half-hidden behind a wall of hanging plants.
Jarvis’s voice finally returned. “Stay where you are.”
Makayla touched the earpiece. “You okay?”
The question slipped out before she could stop it.
Silence.
Then Jarvis said, “Stay where I can see you.”
That was not an answer.
Makayla hated how much she noticed.
She turned to Vasha. “Go to the restroom. Stay where people can see you. Text Trevon if Renzo comes near you.”
“Makayla—”
“Go.”
Vasha hesitated, then moved away.
Makayla walked toward the green door.
Jarvis’s voice sharpened. “Makayla.”
“She knows something.”
“She wants you isolated.”
“She already knows I’m wired. She’s performing.”
“And you’re letting her direct.”
“No,” Makayla said softly. “I’m changing seats.”
She pulled the earpiece out and dropped it into a champagne glass on a nearby tray.
Jarvis’s voice vanished.
The loss of him in her ear felt strange.
Too strange.
Makayla pushed through the green door.
The hallway behind it was cooler and dimmer, lined with the same charcoal-green marble from the fake photo. The music became muffled behind the wall. Staff moved in the distance carrying trays, but the stretch in front of Makayla was empty.
Too empty.
She kept walking.
Her heels clicked against the floor.
One door on the right stood cracked.
Inside, she heard voices.
Calia’s voice.
Renzo’s.
Makayla moved closer.
Renzo sounded irritated. “You said she’d be scared.”
Calia answered, “She is scared. She’s just addicted to pretending.”
“She took the post down.”
“And replaced it with a correction. That makes her look careful, not guilty.”
“So what now?”
“Now we make her look paid.”
Makayla’s breath caught.
Renzo said, “You still got the video?”
“Enough of it.”
“The sister one?”
“Careful,” Calia said.
Renzo lowered his voice, but Makayla still caught pieces.
“Selene said not to use the full file unless—”
A floorboard creaked behind Makayla.
She turned fast.
Too late.
A hand clamped over her mouth and an arm locked around her waist, yanking her backward into a side room.
Makayla drove her heel down hard.
The person grunted.
She bit the hand.
“Damn it,” a man hissed.
Makayla twisted, elbowing him in the ribs. The grip loosened enough for her to shove away and turn.
It was not Renzo.
It was a man she had never seen before. Broad, dark hoodie, cap low over his face. His hand bled where she had bitten him.
Makayla grabbed the first thing her hand found—a metal vase from a side table—and swung.
He ducked.
The vase cracked against the wall.
He lunged again.
Makayla opened her mouth to scream, but the hallway door slammed open.
Jarvis came in like violence had finally found its favorite body.
He hit the man once.
Hard.
The man stumbled back into the wall. Jarvis caught him by the collar and drove him into a shelf so hard glass shattered around them.
Makayla froze.
She had known Jarvis was dangerous.
Knowing and seeing were different.
The man tried to reach into his hoodie.
Jarvis twisted his wrist until he dropped a small black device.
A flash drive.
Trevon appeared in the doorway with two guards behind him.
“Take him,” Jarvis said.
The man struggled.
Jarvis leaned close and said something too low for Makayla to hear.
Whatever it was made the man stop moving.
Trevon’s guards dragged him out.
Makayla’s pulse roared in her ears.
Jarvis turned to her.
The anger on his face shifted the second he saw her clearly.
“You bleeding?”
Makayla looked down.
A thin red line marked her forearm where glass must have nicked her.
“It’s nothing.”
Jarvis crossed the room. “You pulled your earpiece out.”
“Don’t start.”
“You walked into a blind hallway alone.”
“I said don’t start.”
“He had a drive, Makayla. He wasn’t grabbing you for conversation.”
“I know that!”
Her voice cracked against the walls.
Jarvis stopped.
Makayla hated that too. Hated that he knew when not to move closer.
She sucked in one breath. Then another.
“I heard Calia,” she said. “She and Renzo were talking. They want to make me look paid. Renzo mentioned Selene. He said something about the sister video.”
Jarvis’s eyes darkened. “Did Calia see you?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
The room was small, some kind of private storage lounge with extra floral arrangements, folded linens, décor pieces, and shelves of expensive event junk nobody was supposed to see. The broken glass glittered on the floor like ice.
Makayla suddenly became very aware that she was shaking.
She clenched her hands.
Jarvis saw anyway.
“Come here.”
“No.”
“Makayla.”
“I said no.”
He looked at her cut arm. “Let me see.”
“I can see it myself.”
“You are shaking too hard to check it.”
Her eyes snapped to his. “You just love saying the wrong thing.”
His face softened in a way she had no defense for.
“Probably.”
That one word almost undid her.
Makayla looked away.
Jarvis moved slowly this time. He picked up a clean white linen from a shelf and held it out. “May I?”
The question hit her harder than his orders.
She gave him her arm.
He wrapped the linen around the cut with careful hands.
His fingers were warm.
Too warm.
Makayla focused on the wall behind him, on the cracked plaster where she had slammed the vase, on anything but the way his thumb brushed the inside of her wrist.
“You came fast,” she said.
“I saw you ditch the earpiece.”
“So you followed me?”
“Yes.”
“Control issues.”
“Survival issues.”
She looked at him then.
His face was close, bent over her arm. She could see the faint shadow at his jaw, the smooth line of his cheek, the deep focus in his eyes.
He tied the linen and did not let go right away.
“You don’t get to scare me like that,” he said quietly.
Makayla’s breath caught.
“Excuse me?”
His eyes lifted to hers. “You heard me.”
The nerve of him.
The heat of him.
The way he said it like her safety had become personal without asking her permission.
Makayla stepped closer instead of back. “I don’t get to scare you?”
“No.”
“But you get to show up at my apartment, threaten my identity, drag me into your world, and put guards on every door?”
“Yes.”
“That’s real fair.”
“I didn’t say fair.”
“You don’t own fear, Jarvis.”
“No,” he said. “But I know what it looks like when it’s trying to dress itself as bravery.”
That cut close.
Too close.
Makayla yanked her arm back. “You don’t know me.”
“I know you keep running toward pain because the first time you couldn’t stop it.”
The words landed like a slap.
Makayla shoved him.
Hard.
Jarvis barely moved, but he let her push him.
“Don’t,” she said.
Her voice shook for real now.
Jarvis’s face changed. Regret, quick and dark.
“Makayla—”
“No. You don’t get to study my trauma and use it like a key.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“Then do that without cutting me open.”
They stared at each other in the broken little room, both breathing too hard.
The music outside kept thudding through the walls like a second heartbeat.
Jarvis took one step back.
“You’re right,” he said.
Again.
That quiet admission did something worse than fighting would have.
Makayla turned away because she did not want him to see how badly she needed a second to gather herself.
“I hate you,” she whispered.
“No, you don’t.”
She spun back. “Yes, I do.”
Jarvis looked at her like he wished that were true.
“You hate what I know,” he said. “You hate that I see too much. You hate that when danger shows up, I’m already standing there.”
Makayla moved toward him, anger carrying her. “And you hate that I don’t bow. You hate that I don’t wait for permission. You hate that I’m messy and loud and still right half the time.”
“Half?”